Online Job Trends

The Freelancer.co.uk Fast 50 provides an insight into the current online job market.

UK & Europe

Data from over 4 million users and over 2 million projects has been drawn upon to provide an insight into some of the 50 fastest moving online job categories. The Freelancer.co.uk Fast 50 offers one a comprehensive insight into online job trends and high on the agenda for the second quarter of this year is the dominance of Apple iOS over the Android market.

Despite predictions that Android would overtake the Apple iPhone by the end of 2012 for the rate of release of new applications delivered to the platform, the rate of growth for new iPhone apps has increased resulting in a 30 per cent rise in new jobs. Android, meanwhile could manage growth of just 20 per cent. This compares to Q1, where iPhone apps were up 27 per cent with Android very close behind on 26 per cent. iPad jobs have accelerated even faster, increasing its quarter on quarter growth rate from 19 per cent in Q1 to 26 per cent in Q2. Generic Mobile Phone jobs across the board were up a whopping 36 per cent to 5,709.

The Internet Marketing industry, meanwhile has been dealt a series of blows by revisions to Google technology. The company has tried to ensure their search engine return pages more relevant to users but by altering the way the search engines works they have created a knock on effect among those whose job it is to drive customers to their clients online. Consequently the Internet Marketing industry is down 5.6 per cent this quarter to 13,848 jobs with Search Engine Optimisation jobs falling 7.3 per cent and Link Building projects down 8.3 per cent. Article Rewriting and Article Submission has also fallen by 9.3 per cent and down 4.0 per cent respectively. Telemarketing on the other hand was up by 11 per cent perhaps as marketers look to other areas.

“We truly are at an inflexion point of the technology landscape,” commented Freelancer.co.uk Chief Executive, Matt Barrie.

“Two clear trends are evident,” he continued. “Firstly, user activity is moving to mobile devices and the trend won’t be reversing any time soon as the other 5 billion people on this planet join the Internet, primarily through mobile. Secondly, the Internet is becoming more interactive, and the technologies that are winning and will continue to win are open standards like HTML5 and jQuery- to the detriment of the incumbents proprietary technology providers like Adobe and Microsoft.”

Indeed, the current jobs outlook in the online sector suggests that businesses are hoping to weather the economic downturn with Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Back-office positions, from virtual assistants to data entry clerks, were up strongly across the board. Virtual Assistants were up 18 per cent, demand for MS Word processing skyrocketed 119 per cent Data Processing was up by 16 per cent and MS Excel up by 13 per cent.

Interestingly, Facebook related jobs fell dramatically this quarter falling by 14 per cent as advertisers and Social Media experts started to question the effectiveness and ROI of social media advertising on the back of damning reports from customers during the Facebook public offering. With Fortune 500 companies including General Motors apparently pulling their big ticket advertising budgets with the social media giant, Freelancer.co.uk saw the wind disappear from the sails of the Social Media boat, with Twitter projects dropping 1.3 per cent and Social Media jobs stalling at 1.1per cent growth.

Nate Elliott, an analyst at market research firm Forrester has also raised questions over the perceived worth of Facebook activity among businesses: "Companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they're no longer sure Facebook is the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget,” he has said, “a shocking fact given the site's dominance among users.”

The data for the Q2 Fast 50 report came from 190,000 online jobs posted on the website during the quarter, making it the leading forward looking indicator for the global online job economy.